The Massive U.S. Pipeline Buildout Is Mostly for Gas Going Overseas

Editor s Note This article originally appeared at Inside Setting News a nonprofit independent news organization that covers setting resource and the atmosphere It is republished with permission Sign up for their newsletter here More than three-quarters of new gas pipeline ceiling now under growth in the U S would feed additional liquefied natural gas exports rather than supporting domestic ability requirements a new description concludes Greenhouse gas emissions tied to that new ceiling would be far larger than the current circumstances toxicity from all coal-fired power plants nationwide according to the statement published Monday by the Center for Resource Environmental Analysis CEEA is a in the past few days formed think tank based in Arlington Virginia that focuses on vitality and environmental guidelines The money flowing to gas pipeline infrastructure is not slowing and is intended to push US gas production even higher from its current record levels Jeremy Symons president of the CEEA and a former federal context program advisor explained in a written message This buildout will extend our dependency on natural gas for decades to come slowing the transition to cleaner more affordable alternatives Planned natural gas transmission pipelines would add billion cubic feet per day of additional threshold a figure just below the total volume of U S natural gas production in according to the record The largest planned pipelines across the country and percent of total quota of current pipeline projects are intended to export gas overseas as LNG based on the authors assessment of federal statistics and other general records The additional gas shipments would have notable implications for environment change If all of the pipelines are built and run at full threshold carbon dioxide emissions from burning this additional gas would be two and half times greater than the CO currently distributed from all U S coal-fired power plants the analysis ascertained This doesn t include emissions of methane a surroundings super pollutant and the primary component of natural gas Methane emissions occur at every step of the natural gas supply chain from wellheads and pipelines to LNG vessels and end users as the gas leaks or is intentionally vented Methane emissions from the additional pipelines would pack a circumstances punch nearly twice that of CO emissions from coal-fired power plants over a -year period according to the description The amount of gas leaks from the oil and gas sector will likely increase as the Trump administration rolls back the industry s methane regulations the assessment noted We know from hundreds of thousands of aerial and satellite measurements that methane leaks from oil and gas production are far worse than we previously realized which makes the state footprint of natural gas as bad as coal in various regions of the country commented Danny Richter a senior fellow with CEEA and the summary s lead author We had a clear path to clean up the methane issue including the methane emissions reduction campaign enacted by Congress in as well as EPA regulations for the oil and gas industry But that pathway has been shut down by the current administration A fee on excessive methane emissions from oil and gas producers implemented under the Biden administration was rescinded by the Trump administration on May It is clear from the beginning of this document that it was created with the outcome already determined and no desire to provide facts an EPA spokesperson informed Inside Atmosphere News U S methane emissions have been falling for decades thanks to American innovation not heavy-handed leadership regulations while domestic production of oil and gas has exponentially increased According to EPA methane emissions in the United States decreased by between and Measurements in the field have repeatedly shown that shared methane emissions far understate actual releases The American Petroleum Institute an oil and gas industry group did not respond to a request for comment The assessment is based on U S Department of Strength figures on pipeline projects presently under evolution It is unclear whether all of the planned pipelines will be built Fifty-four of the projects slightly more than half of all pipelines under maturation have either not yet been approved or are on hold This includes one of the largest proposed pipelines the billion Alaska Nikiski LNG project The pipe which proponents have sought for decades would conveyance gas miles from Alaska s North Slope to an LNG export terminal in southern Alaska Completing the proposed export terminal a retrofit of an existing import terminal is included in the project s projected cost The developer the Alaska Gasline Maturation Corp has applied for permits for the pipeline countless of which were approved during the last Trump administration but still requires more President Donald Trump has directed agencies to speed up permitting and roll back environmental protections He touted the Alaska Nikiski LNG project in an address to Congress earlier this year as truly spectacular and disclosed the permitting is gotten Arvind Ravikumar co-director of the Potential Emissions Modeling and Evidence Lab at the University of Texas at Austin cautioned that the analysis included figures for carbon dioxide emissions of gas burned by end users in other countries that import the LNG The way international carbon accounting works in this space is that you count only those emissions that happen within your national edge Ravikumar revealed However David Lyon a senior methane scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund announced including emissions from burning the gas wherever it occurs made sense Setting change is global Lyon stated If we are just exporting our emissions to other countries that s still going to cause environment change and have impact However Lyon noted that in various cases building gas pipelines could definitely help reduce emissions For example in the Permian basin of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico the largest oil and gas producing region in the country gas is often flared or vented due to a lack of sufficient pipeline quota In such cases additional pipelines could help reduce flaring and its associated emissions But it would be better to avoid drilling new wells in areas that lack sufficient pipeline threshold in the first place Lyon added In comparing greenhouse gas emissions associated with the planned pipelines to those of coal-power plants the analysis only compares CO emissions between the two fuel sources Elsewhere the description discusses methane emissions from the gas supply chain but does not consider methane emissions from coal mines that feed coal-fired power plants A fresh peer-reviewed research comparing the greenhouse gas emissions of LNG and coal detected methane emissions from coal mines were relatively modest compared to coal s CO emissions In addition to permitting issues economic forces could also limit the number of pipeline projects that get built in the coming years or the extent to which completed pipelines operate at full quota China the world s largest importer of LNG stopped taking U S gas entirely in March in response to U S tariffs on Chinese goods Symons disclosed the ongoing pipeline buildout could commit the U S to significantly larger LNG exports for decades to come This locks in more fossil fuel dependency that future presidents won t be able to make go away he reported Policies like tax incentives come and go but pipelines are forever The post The Massive U S Pipeline Buildout Is Mostly for Gas Going Overseas appeared first on The Texas Observer